Paul Ryan Agent of the Banking Class

Bloomberg Reports

Highlights...

• Rep. Paul Ryan  has more than $5.4 million in his campaign account  
• Romney’s campaign raised more than $1.2 million after announcing Ryan’s addition to the ticket
• Ryan opposes the 2010 financial regulation law that imposed new rules on an industry blamed for contributing to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression (wants more deregulation)
•  Lobbyists including the American Banking Association and the Financial Services Roundtable scheduled a fundraiser for Ryan’s leadership political action committee
• Lobbyists for lenders that make short- term loans online held a fundraiser for Ryan’s re-election campaign

Ryan’s budget proposal to end traditional Medicare for future generations would benefit private insurers!!!

• Insurance employees and political action committees have given $815,328 to Ryan’s election efforts over his career
• Wisconsin based private insurance  Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. and related family have been donating more than $89,000 annually to Paul Ryan's campaign.
• Employees of the National Beer Wholesalers Association have been contributing $75,000 annually to Paul Ryan's campaign

Paul Ryan's Net Worth estimated between $927,100 and $3.2 million (2010)

Top Contributors: Baker Tilly Virchow Krause LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Northwestern Mutual, Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), Abbott Laboratories (ABT), Abbott Laboratories (ABT), UBS AG (UBSN) and Home Depot Inc. (HD)

• • Ryan’s Prosperity PAC had $724,265 cash on hand at the end of June, according to FEC reports. His campaign account of more than $5 million can be turned over to the Republican National Committee; it can’t be used directly by Romney’s campaign. 

HARRY REID IN 1995 ABOUT AUDITING THE FED, SOUNDING LIKE RON PAUL

 the House voted 327-8 to pass Ron Paul’s “Audit the Fed” bill. But the legislation is dead on arrival in the Senate, thanks to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who has vowed not to allow the Senate to vote on it. But it wasn’t always this way with Reid.

Reid championed the legislation, according to watchdog govtrack.us.

In the video of the 1995 speech, Business Insider writes, Reid sounds a lot like Paul:

“I have sponsored legislation every year that would call for an audit of the Federal Reserve system. I offer that amendment every year, every year it gets nowhere,” Reid says. “I think it would be interesting to know about the Federal Reserve. I think we should audit the Federal Reserve — it‘s taxpayer’s money that’s being used there. But we don’t do that.”

“People just don’t care about the Federal Reserve. Maybe it‘s because it’s a subject that’s not very interesting — it’s not pornography, it’s not murder, it’s not an issue that deals with the Wild West.”

U.S. Discretionary Spending: Fiscal Year 2011

Jim Grant (Ron Paul's Pick For Interim FED Chairman) on the slow (but inevitable) transition of US from fiat to Gold Standard

3rd World America in Prices

Warren Buffett Attempts to Stick-Save Bank of America, Stock Gets Hammered

LA Times Reports

Bank of America, under fire from shareholders and analysts, is getting a $5-billion investment from Warren Buffett's investment company. The banking giant's stock soared this morning on the news.
The investment by Berkshire Hathaway is reminiscent of a $5-billion investment Buffett made in Goldman Sachs in September 2008 in the depths of the financial crisis. That injection of capital helped restore confidence in Goldman and helped the Wall Street firm attract other investments.
As with the Goldman infusion, Buffett negotiated extremely favorable terms from Bank of America. He is set to receive BofA preferred shares that will pay Berkshire a 6% dividend each year. If the bank wants to redeem the shares it has to pay Buffett a 5% premium.

Market-Ticker.org

Trends Journal Alert: China Offshoring The Collapse of the Western World

Paul Craig Roberts opines

How big is planet earth? Large if compared to the moon, small if compared to the solar system, and infinitesimal if compared to the universe. The point is that the size of something depends on that to which it is being compared. 

The San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank www.frbsf.org and offshoring’s shills forgot this simple point. On August 8 the SF Fed put out an Economic Letter in which US imports of goods made in China (both by Chinese and US firms) were explained away as a mere 2.7 percent of US personal consumption expenditures. 

I am confident that the staff of the SF Fed were competent to get the percentage correct. But does it mean anything? No.

For most Americans, their income is used up on housing, energy, car payments, food, and medical care. Very little income is left, especially these days, for durable (for example, furniture and household equipment) and nondurable (for example, clothing and shoes) manufactured goods. 

Russia PM Putin Proposes Reemergence of 'Soviet Era' Economic Union

 Twenty years after the Soviet Union collapsed, Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, may not, as is sometimes alleged, be trying to recreate it. But he is pursuing a different project – to build a “quasi-European Union” out of former Soviet states.

A customs union he launched a year ago between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan has already removed tariffs and customs controls along the three states’ internal borders.

Come January this is due to expand into a “common economic space”, ensuring free movement of goods, services and capital across a single market of 165m people – 60 per cent of the former Soviet population.

At a Moscow summit this month, prime ministers of the three states set an even more ambitious target – turning the grouping into a “Eurasian economic union” by 2013. There is even talk, down the line, of a common currency. - FT

Putin Slams US As "Parasite" on Global Economy

Via AP

"They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy," Putin told the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi while touring its lakeside summer camp some five hours drive north of Moscow. 

"They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar," Putin said at the open-air meeting with admiring young Russians in what looked like early campaigning before parliamentary and presidential polls. 

US President Barack Obama earlier announced a last-ditch deal to cut about $2.4 trillion from the U.S. deficit over a decade, avoid a crushing debt default and stave off the risk that the nation's AAA credit rating would be downgraded. 

The deal initially soothed anxieties and led Russian stocks to jump to three-month highs, but jitters remained over the possibility of a credit downgrade.
"Thank god," Putin said, "that they had enough common sense and responsibility to make a balanced decision." 

But Putin, who has often criticized the United States' foreign exchange policy, noted that Russia holds a large amount of U.S. bonds and treasuries. 

"If over there (in America) there is a systemic malfunction,
this will affect everyone," Putin told the young Russians.

The Enemy is Washington

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term.  He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal.  He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand.


The Enemy is Washington

Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase.  The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat.  Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

If the rating agencies downgraded Treasuries, the company executives would be arrested for the fraudulent ratings that they gave to the junk that Wall Street peddled to the rest of the world. The companies would be destroyed and their ratings discredited. The US government will never default on its bonds, because the bonds, unlike those of Greece, Spain, and Ireland, are payable in its own currency. Regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the Federal Reserve will continue to purchase the Treasury’s debt.  If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, then so is the US government.

A Few Charts Depicting US Economic Woes

marketoracle.co.uk

Marketoracle.co.uk

marketoracle.co.uk

Presenting Things You Buy That Used to Be Free

MSN- Liz Weston

Accessing Your Own Money
You may not believe it, my dears, but banks once actually paid you for the privilege of storing your money. No, I'm not talking about the toasters that banks would give you for opening an account. I'm talking about interest, and receiving it was a wonderful thing: Your balance could grow with no effort on your part.

Banks still purportedly pay interest, but you'll need a magnifying glass to spot the difference in your account balance. Meanwhile, most financial institutions are intent on whittling away at your balance in every way they can think of -- through monthly account fees, ATM fees, fees for having a statement printed or the image of an old check retrieved, even fees for talking to a teller.

You don't have to let them rob you blind, of course. You can still get free checking at most big banks by maintaining a certain balance or agreeing to an all-electronic account (no paper statements, no talking to tellers). Or you can expand your search to community banks and credit unions, which often still offer free checking. Avoiding ATM fees can be as simple as drawing money from your own bank's machines or asking for cash back when using your debit card.

Marc Faber CNBC 04/18/11: Full Interview

Marc Faber is an international investor known for his uncanny predictions of the stock market and futures markets around the world.

S&P Fires Warning Shot on US Fiscal Health

Marketwatch

Standard & Poor’s cut its ratings outlook on the U.S. to negative from stable on Monday, lighting a fire under Washington’s deficit-reduction debate and sending stock markets sharply lower. The rating agency effectively gave Washington a two-year deadline to enact meaningful change, just days after House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and President Barack Obama each outlined their plans for slashing debt.

Finally some news to send a JOLT to the markets (As if World War, Japanese Environmental Holocaust, European debt default, US budget insanity wasn't bearish enough) , this morning the reaction in the markets took the form of giant dumping.

Real Green Jobs Even Obama Can Believe In

Andrew Jackson's Defeat of the Second Bank of the United States- Spark Notes Version

Spark Notes- The Bank

As his term continued, Jackson truly grew a desire to crush the Second Bank of the United States. Over time he had decided that it could not continue as it was, and that it did not warrant reform. It must be destroyed. Jackson's reason for this conclusion was an amalgamation of his past financial problems, his views on states' rights, and his Tennessee roots. The Second Bank centralized financial might, jeopardizing economic stability; it served as a monopoly on fiscal policy, but it did not answer to anyone within the government. Above any principled concerns, however, the Bank became a political battle.

Federal Reserve Bloomberg's FOIA Release- Discount Window (Downloadable)

ZeroHedge-Tyler Durden

Tired of poring through thousands of PDF files from the Fed's Bloomberg FOIA release? Curious why Ron Paul said that he "was surprised and deeply disturbed ... to learn the staggering amount of money that went to foreign banks" and is planning to hold a hearing over emergency loans to the branches of non-U.S. banks? Then here is the excel file for you: the following publicly shared google docs spreadsheet contains the complete Discount Window loan origination data from March 14, 2008 through March 16, 2009. We offer it so that anyone who wishes to perform their own analysis on the primary data can do so (and needless to say banks noted as FORI in the markstat entity type are foreign borrowers). 

 Excel- Spreadsheet downloadable